A tip: With the carb installed, remove the dashpot cover, piston, and needle.
Shine a light and look straight down into the jet (the hole where the needle
goes).
You should be able to see the fuel level about 1/4" or 1/2" down
in the jet. If you see nothing, or the fuel is starting to rise up to
(or over!) the top of the jet hole, you have a problem.
This tip works on both SUs and Strombergs.
Doug Braun
'72 Spit
At 11:20 AM 7/21/00 -0500, you wrote:
>List,
>
>I have a 78 Spit that is suffering from carboration problems that I believe
>are choke related. It has the original water choke on the carb, and I am
>thinking of converting it over to a manual choke. I was going to do this
>for diagnostic purposes, to verify that my carborative (is that a real word
>?) problems are truly choke related. I have tried holding my hand over the
>front of the carb to induce a choke, but that isn't working for me.
>
>Maybe I should back up a step here, and describe whats going on, to make
>sure I haven't overlooked something before I do this. My Spit was
>delivered to me mostly in boxes, and I've been building it bit by bit over
>the last few months. I have it to the point now where I have compression,
>and spark (thanks to a new Crane ignition and coil) and I can get the car to
>fire and run for 3 seconds at a pop by using starter fluid. So I do know
>it is capable of running, if I could get the fuel into the cylinders. So I
>took the carb off, actually it was off originally. And I rebuilt it, new
>gaskets, new diaphragm, etc. Completely soaked the thing in carb cleaner to
>make sure every passage was clear of varnish, and crud. Then blew through
>each passage with compressed air to remove the cleaner. Nice bright, clean
>carb now. Should work right ? Nope. Take it off again, double check to
>make sure everything is pointed the right way inside, nothings loose,
>nothings forgotten. The passage way from the float bowl to the idle jet is
>clear (I can see through it). Still no go. To my way of thinking, to
>achieve an idle I need that passage to be clear, and I need some amount of
>air mixture though it. If the gas passage is open, that leaves the air
>mixture as the source of my problem..... That leads me to where could the
>air mixture go bad... The rough idle setting (yes, a new O-ring), but
>unless I have it actually running, I can't guess where it needs to be
>properly set to. (I've tried turning it in, out, and everywhere in between
>with no effect).... Or... it might be the choke not properly working... or
>something else I have completely over looked (hint hint... jump in here with
>magical answer... yes you....) Which brings me back around to my original
>question, can I ditch the water choke (which I don't trust) with a
>mechanical choke ?
>
>Cheers,
>Dan
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